


Ut Pictura Poesis

by Wesakechak



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Gen, Rei Being Introspective, p3i
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-13 00:55:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10503069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wesakechak/pseuds/Wesakechak
Summary: Rei spends the night looking at a poem from what seemed like a lifetime ago, searching for answers. Minor AsuRei.





	

**Author's Note:**

> *le shrug* idk, just an experiment

Rei Ayanami stared up at the moon that hung in the sky, framed by the window over the desk she was sitting at. The moon was pale white except for a streak of crimson that ran across a narrow area. Blood from Lilith, spilled during Impact. The dark scar did not impede the light that shone into the room, illuminating the desk and falling onto the bed behind her. Unlike the rays of the sun that signalled warmth, the moonbeams merely lit what they could without any nurturing heat. 

In some aspects, she saw herself resembling the moon. Not just visually, with her albino colouration, but how both her and the moon functioned. Both reflected a much brighter object in their relative area to give off the appearance of being a source of that which they reflected. If Rei was the moon, then Asuka Langley Soryuu was the sun. Soft snores rose from the bed that Rei had left half an hour before, emanating from the German girl who had in the past two years became an integral part of Rei’s existence.

She scanned the desk. A lamp, off so as not to be redundant under the moonlight, sat to one side. On the opposite side was a picture, framed in a simple wooden square. The picture was of her and Asuka, standing on the shore of a lake as dusk set in and painted the night sky purple. Scattered haphazardly around the desk were pieces of loose leaf, most of them containing some hastily jotted down words in either Japanese or German. Her eyes drifted to the paper that sat in front of her, near the center of the desk. On it was written a completed poem, drawn from some dark recess of her mind in her sleep and staying with her after she had bolted awake. A memory that was not hers, but now belonged to her. In the same vein, so did the poem she had transcribed without fully realizing it. Was it what she was now? A reflection of her current self? Or was she someone else? _Mountain… heavy mountain. Things change over time._

Was she something? Rei bit her lip, hard enough to feel a sharp pain as her incisor dug into her flesh. She could experience pain. That was a change she had inflicted. She drew blood, tasting the distinctly metallic liquid as she ran her tongue over where her tooth had pierced the skin. Even so, it was temporary. Her body would heal. It was not natural. A lock of hair fell in front of her eye, and she moved to brush it back behind her ear. As she tucked it behind, an idea occurred to her. Perhaps that was the answer she was looking for. In those two years since impact her hair had grown longer. It did not drape down her back as Asuka’s did, but it would touch her shoulders as she walked. Natural growth. Natural change. She was something. She was alive. One needed to know death to know life, she mused. She had died thrice. Yet she still had trouble with knowing life. Was she different, or was the saying simply false?

Her eyes continued to read the poem she had written without consideration. Though it was not unusual for her to expunge the questions she had about her existence onto paper as poetry, this was different. Those past poems had required her to spend time thinking about what she wanted to write. This one had come from a memory, her thoughts as she sat inside an entry plug. _Sky… blue sky. What your eyes can’t see. What your eyes can see._ The soul was something that she hadn’t been able to see. Yet she had seen all souls during the Impact. Did she have a soul? Denying that would be foolish. It was one of the few questions that Rei could answer without hesitation. She had a soul. A soul separate from Lilith. Lilith was gone and she was here.

 _Sun… a unique object._ There was no other sun. Nothing else that provided light and life as it did. A soul that was unique like the sun, she noted. _Water… something comforting. Commander Ikari._ Rei slumped her shoulders. She had placed so much trust in Gendo Ikari, even though it had blinded her. Even though she had had doubts about him. Perhaps things would have turned out differently… she shook her head to dismiss the thought. Idle speculation was not something that she enjoyed engaging in. What had happened in the past was done with. Reflect on the past, but always move forward. Her own words of advice.

 _Flowers… so many of the same… and so many unneeded._ Something that was no longer what she was, yet something that still haunted her. Her own mantra that she had entered battle with, that she now whispered to the blood stained moon, “If I die I can be replaced.” It was no longer true. There were no more empty bodies waiting to take her place. No other flowers to pick. If she were to keel over and die, Rei Ayanami would cease to be. She was mortal.

The body could change, but could the soul? She continued to read the poem that she had scribbled down. It had been almost automatic after waking, she had not considered what had been written until now. _Sky… red red sky. The colour red. I hate the colour red._ Rei looked at the red streak on the moon. The red blood of Lilith. LCL. The red blood of humans. The vermillion of her own eyes. The colour that she saw most at NERV. She hated red, that had not changed. Nor could she see that changing in the immediate future. She glanced behind her, at the bed. The mess of hair atop Asuka’s head was also red. She did not hate it though. The opposite was true.

Had she been asked what her favourite colour was, she would reply with blue. _Water flowing._ Blue was the colour of the sky, and had been the colour of the ocean. Blue was calming, tranquil. As was water. It would not move spontaneously, only when given a path to do so. Much like she preferred to do. Still, the red of Asuka’s hair would, without fail, cause her heart to flutter. Was that a change? Or was it an exception?  

Rei pressed on, hoping that the answers would reveal themselves further into the poem. _Blood… the smell of blood. The woman who never bleeds._ The smell had never bothered her when she had piloted. It had been irrelevant. Like so many other things in her life; dreaming, laughing, embarrassment, her aversion to the smell had came after she had found herself living past her purpose. Still, she did not menstruate. That had been something that was deemed irrelevant for completing the scenario. Therefore she had not been designed to do it. That had not changed.

Rei paused and dropped the pencil that had been idly hanging between her fingers. It hit the wood on the desk, loudly drumming as it bounced to a stop. Again Rei glanced at the sleeping figure behind her, certain that the sound would have woken her. It had not. Quiet snores still passed Asuka’s lips as she slumbered. Between each was silence. Rei found it comforting. Silence was where her thoughts were clearest, when she was most relaxed and composed. Even though it was abhorred by most people. Another difference, she noted. For her, silence was natural. For others, it was the white noise of life.

 _Man made from red soil._ Sculpted from clay. From LCL. Created with purpose. As she had been. Not born to anyone. What did that make her? Rei slumped further into her chair. She was not a doll, that much was certain. Yet that did not answer her question, merely eliminated a pitfall. _Man made from man and woman._ Something else she was not. Yui Ikari was listed as her mother on those records made after Impact, but those same records did not list a father. It was of hardly any consequence to Rei. The largest change in Rei’s life from it being that Shinji had acknowledged her as family. Yet even then they maintained their distance from each other. Or, she corrected herself, Asuka kept her distance from Shinji and Shinji kept his distance from Rei. An ocean’s distance. Rei looked out the window, staring at the central area of Berlin.

 _City... a human creation._ The city was quiet, the rush of cars driving this late absent. Those areas around the Atlantic Ocean had been less affected by Third Impact. Impact had rendered the entire territory of Japan uninhabitable, and had devastated much of the surrounding land. The members of NERV that had returned had either gone to Berlin or Boston, where there were other facilities for them to work at. The cities had changed since then, or so Rei had been told. Remolded themselves to cater to the smaller populations. Most estimates put the number of people left alive after Impact at just under one million. Those had been the ones strong enough to return. That only raised another question. She had completed her purpose, so why had she returned? This was an old question for her, the first words that had left her mouth after Impact. She had yet to find an answer. Did it matter? She wondered. 

 _Eva… a human creation._ She remembered what Eva had been capable of, how much destruction it caused. The three surviving pilots had all centered themselves around Eva, dedicated themselves to it. They should have been able to control it. Yet they were not the masters of Eva. Nor was any human. It was a corruption of something greater. _What is human? A creation of god?_ Lilim. The term that had been used to describe those born of Lilith. Rei accepted that definition. Though she found it broad. She was different, yet also Lilim. The same was true for Shinji’s Eva. While the others had been made from Adam, Unit 01 had been from Lilith. Had it been a Lilim? _Is man a human creation?_ What was it that made her see herself as something else? How was it that people defined mankind? Some saw her as a person, others did not. She could not tell what each saw to make that conclusion. 

 _The things I possess are a life and soul. I am a vessel for a soul._ She had been a vessel for Lilith, who had existed as a foreign pressure that had played at the edge of her mind. She had known, in a way, that it had been there. She had avoided acknowledgement. To her it had been another irrelevancy. Lilith was gone now, but was it only her body or her soul as well? Rei focussed on the moon again. That was a question she could never answer, and it was one that she did not want an answer for. She was not Lilith, she was Rei Ayanami. Or was she a vessel for Rei now? She glanced at her hand, the pale skin luminous under the moonlight. The body and the soul were not the same. Was it her soul thinking, or her body? Which was she?

 _Entry plug, the throne for a soul._ Rei had been in an entry plug when she had first created the poem. In Unit 01. The synchronization of pilots and the Eva, the souls inside them. Yui Ikari inside Shinji’s, Kyouko Soryuu inside Asuka’s. Had it been Toji’s mother inside the short lived pilot’s Eva? Most likely. Who had been in hers? Another Rei Ayanami. The soul of the first Rei, the one killed by Naoko Akagi.

 _Who is this?_ Who was she then? If she was not the first Rei, then who? Was she the third Rei? Was the third a continuation of the second? Was she a culmination of them all? All questions that she did not have answers to. She did not know herself. Did it matter? A part of her asked again. _This is me._ She thought, therefore she was. Descarte. Yet that was flawed. It did not answer the question she had. Everyone thought, therefore everyone was. She was not looking for universal indicators of humanity, she was looking for who she was.

 _Who am I?_ She continued to read. First Child. Wondergirl. Ayanami. Rei. Lilith. All names, all temporary. Symbolic of her identity. It was the wrong question. Her eyes continued to scan the line, noting she had also seen that problem when writing the poem. _What am I?_ A venomous voice called her a doll. _What am I?_ Another voice proclaimed her as an angel, something to be feared. _What am I?_ Her own voice told her she was useless, that she no longer had purpose. _What am I?_ The first voice, kinder this time, asked her why it mattered. Yet that only brought her back to where she had began.

 _I am myself, the object is me._ You are you. Asuka had repeated the explanation often in the past two years. It was sufficient for others, but it had not answered her question. Nor had Asuka been able to explain why the answer had made sense to her. It was an answer though. The best she had. She would have to accept it. She was Rei. Yet, again, what did that mean? _This is the me that can be seen, yet I do not feel as though I am myself._ Was there a difference between who people saw her as and who she was? Different people viewed her differently. She could not look to others to see who she was, she needed to look inside herself.

 _Very strange, I feel my body is melting._ She shivered, the phantom feeling of being absorbed into Lilith crawling over her body. The feeling of her mind being overwhelmed by the thoughts of the ancient being responsible for life. _I can no longer see myself, my shape is fading._ If she had no body, then was she still Rei? She had lost her body before, yet she was here. Something had survived that destruction, her soul. Her soul was her true self. Could she express her true self? She could not show it to others. She could only show it after being filtered through her body. Was that a problem for her? Perfect understanding between beings was not a guarantee of happiness. Had she been unhappy with Instrumentality? Had that been why she returned? 

_I feel a presence of someone who is not me._ Had it been Lilith felt, or Yui? Did it matter? What had happened to that soul? _Is someone there, beyond this?_ She shut her eyes, listening for a response. Yet her mind was silent. No stirring of another consciousness that resided within her. No indication that her mother was watching over her. There was nothing deeper. She was Rei Ayanami. She could not quantify what that meant. Did it matter? She opened her eyes again, inhaling slowly to calm herself. Then she glanced down, reading the rest of the poem. A list of names. _Ikari. I know this person, Major Katsuragi. Doctor Akagi. Everyone. Classmates. The pilot of Unit 02. Commander Ikari. Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?_ She squeezed her eyes shut, the words echoing in her mind. Who was she? She wanted to know, yet she could not figure it out. No matter how she thought about it. The only answers led to more questions.

“Wow, you really think that low of me?” Rei gasped suddenly as a hand touched her shoulder, bringing her back to reality. She sprang up from the chair, bumping her knees on the desk as she stood. The picture on the desk fell over and various sheets of loose leaf shifted around. “Easy Rei, it’s just me.” Asuka took a step back, dropping her hand from Rei’s shoulder.

Rei slumped her shoulders and dropped her chin as she stared at the disheveled desk. “Asuka. I was merely writing. I remember composing a poem from… before. I do not think lowly of you.” She muttered quietly. She shuffled on her feet, registering the dull pain of smacking her knees against the desk.

“I’m just joking, sheesh.” Asuka reached out and gently turned Rei around so they faced each other. Nothing happened for a few moments, Asuka's grin fading. “Alright, what’s the matter?” She asked. Rei glanced up, the moonlight illuminating the concerned expression on Asuka’s face. An inquisitive frown with a scrunched brow, her blue eyes darting up and down as she scrutinized Rei. Rei stayed silent for a moment, but it was enough for Asuka to guess what was wrong. “Wandering about who you are?” She suspected.

Rei gave a small nod. “Yes.” She reached over and picked up the picture, setting it upright once again. She was smiling in the picture. Did it matter who she was if she was happy?

Asuka sighed, walking up to Rei. “C’mon, it’s three in the morning. You’re thinking too hard about it.” She complained. Then she wrapped her arms around Rei's waist and picked her up with nothing but a small grunt to show any strain. Asuka carried Rei back to their bed, then dropped her on it. Asuka climbed over her, back to her side. “You’re Rei, and that’s good enough.” She whispered reassuringly as her head hit the pillow. Rei nodded. It was an answer. One that she had to be content with. 


End file.
